


i'm not a crybaby

by triggerswaggiehavoc



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Common Cold, Confessions, M/M, Rain, References to Illness, Storms, Summer, Summer Vacation, Teen Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-09
Updated: 2017-04-09
Packaged: 2018-10-16 17:23:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10575969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/triggerswaggiehavoc/pseuds/triggerswaggiehavoc
Summary: There is no good time to get sick, but there are definitely times that suck way worse than others. Minghao ought to know.





	

Wake up.

 

Minghao’s eyes flick open to a dull beige wall crawling with afternoon shadows, the quiet afterimages of pouring raindrops outside as they pelt the world in uneven rhythm. He listens to the rain’s insistent patter while he watches the wall, eyes glued to the hazy projections of the drops that slide down his window, to one particular drop sliding slowly and slowly and slowly, joining with companions on its lazy way down. Sweat glues his shirt to his tanned back, shines in a sick gloss on his forehead, sticks his hair to the skin in frenzied impressions of tapering roots. The blanket bunched in a wad beneath him is too hot, but he can’t find the energy to move.

What a bummer to get sick in the summer, Soonyoung told him. Absolutely unfair. We’re finally free, he said, from school and tests and everything, and now you’ve gone and gotten sick, and it’s a total bummer. Minghao agrees. It’s a bummer, a total bummer, to be trapped in a bed that’s ten million degrees too hot when you feel like the bones in your legs have been stolen and replaced by bone-shaped jello. He flops onto his back to stare at the ceiling, at the idle fan dangling there, and it’s a mistake. The shirt he’s wearing fastens itself even more closely to his soaked back, presses tight in the wake of the overheated comforter under him. If only he had the energy to turn that stupid fan on.

If it weren’t enough to be overcome with a fever mere weeks after being liberated from hellish linoleum halls and 80-question finals, it’s certainly Minghao’s luck that he’s been immobilized on his friend’s birthday, even better that his illness brought with it a lovely summer rain, the tremendous kind of storm where the rain is still hot and walking around in it feels like diving into a steaming bath. Muted claps of thunder hit his ears through the haze of foggy heat between them, rumble like a distant heartbeat displaced to his chest. He thinks he recalls Junhui saying something about hanging out at the park for his birthday. So much for that. Minghao lets his leaden eyelids fall shut once more. Junhui has Mario Party; they’ll figure something out.

A soft pattern of beeps finds him, moments later or eons, takes an eternity to introduce itself as his phone’s text tone. He fumbles for it blindly, useless fingers slipping over the smooth surface for minutes before gaining enough traction to grab it and drag it back. One eye cracks itself open when the screen is in front of his nose, too-bright and glaring, searing its white oblivion into his retinas. He blinks while he waits for the squiggles of black to turn into words.

 

_Where r youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu_

 

The name at the top of the screen reveals itself, letter by letter. Jeonghan. What a strange person to be texting him, Minghao thinks, or maybe it’s not strange. His stomach feels a little funny when he reads the name, a little light, too empty and too full. His eyes flick to the clock. Twelve past noon. Shouldn’t Junhui have texted him? It’s his party. More than that, shouldn’t Soonyoung have said something? He taps at the screen with lethargic thumbs.

 

_Sick_

 

Ten seconds elapse.

_Sick??!??!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!??_

 

That’s what I said, Minghao thinks, but his hands lack the drive to type it. The phone slips from his hands and drops to his chest, shining screen down, another extra pressure that’s too warm where it lies, but he leaves it, shields it with his palms and closes his eyes again. Another quiet pulse of thunder shakes his window before the buzz of his phone rouses him back to life.

 

_Is ur mom home??????????_

 

His eyes are almost still closed when he replies, too tired to hold themselves up, too sick to do much at all.

 

_Work_

It buzzes again before he’s lost consciousness, right against his sternum, but his eyes won’t open no matter how hard he begs, body won’t move from where it melts into the sheets. The ceaseless cascade of raindrops outside sends him off, a rhythmless march of the world’s most infinite soldiers, out of time and hushed in their loudness. An ill hue of purple paints the ceiling above him with a local lightning strike, trailed by a single muted clap so far behind Minghao forgets they know each other. The fan above him still does not turn.

 

Go to sleep.

 

Lifetimes pass before Minghao wakes up again, countless unending births and deaths, a march of time eternal and infernal through the catacombs of a dream. His phone’s clock tells him it’s been two hours, but his body tells him it’s been innumerable years, spine creaks in protest when he hauls it up from the disgusting pool it's gathered on the linens. His head feels lighter now, light enough to pull him to his feet and across the room, to flip the fan’s switch and send it spinning in exhausted circles. Warm air stirs in the corners of the room, churns with the motion of the blades and ripples over the stray clumps of hair poking out from the top of his head.

His mother won’t be home for three more hours, he guesses, and she hasn’t sent him a text all day to ask if he’s still alive. You’re a strong kid, she told him when she was bustling out his door on her way to work, and you’ll be fine after you sleep it off. Some doctoral advice that is. His attention is caught by a glowing red number one at the corner of the tiny envelope icon in the screen’s center, a glow which demands to be noticed, a red which demands to be heard. He taps it, gentle, careful, and the message blinks slowly onto the screen.

 

_Can i come over???_

Fourteen minutes after the last text before it. Minghao ignores the clutch in his gut and blows out steam between his teeth. It’s almost not worth it to respond so late, but he’ll feel the guilt eating at him for days if he doesn’t, so he swipes his fingertips in lazy lines over the keyboard, erasing and rewriting until he’s drawn the right sequence together. His final decision is far too simple for the amount of thought he put into it.

 

_Sorry, fell asleep_

 

Eyes shut, he reclines on his elbows, lets the subtle breeze manufactured by the fan do its precious work. He doesn’t necessarily want to spend the whole day asleep, but he feels slumber sink its claws back into him one by one at the hands of the careful wind sifting over him and the drizzly lullaby at the window. One minute passes, five, ten. The sweat glazed over his skin is tacky but no longer unbearable, and loose tendrils of hair flutter around his eyebrows in gentle waves. Buzz.

 

_Pls come open the door_

 

Grammatically, it’s fine. Vocabulary is also up to snuff. Even in the meaning exist no faults. Somehow, though, Minghao can’t quite get it to add up like more than a decade of compulsory public education should have taught him how to. Open the door? Is there something outside? He finds a feeble way to his feet and pads down the stairs. Surely not, he thinks. Surely Jeonghan did not come over without an answer to his text. He attempts a peek out the window closest to the front door when he’s down the stairs, but no luck. The rain is washing everything too white for him to see.

A thick puff of earthy steam accosts him the second he’s swung the door open, rain bounces off the paved stoop and onto his bare toes. The walkway is pea gravel and hurts like nobody’s business to walk on without shoes, and Minghao would rather die on the spot than tread out into the world’s warmest waterfall, but that insatiably curious part of him thinks he can’t know if Jeonghan is actually here unless he wades out. Pale sheets fall in front of him, wave after wave, dive off the sides of the footpath and flow in irregular trenches down to the flooding sidewalk. Sure is coming down out there. Minghao purses his lips in thought. Probably just a prank.

Closing the door is half of the battle, at least feels like it, but once he’s got the rain shut back out, the trip back up the stairs seems so daunting. I’ll just take a rest, he figures, and then I’ll get back upstairs. I’ll make it back up there and go back to sleep and stop being sick. His mother always said he has an iron will, the kind of kid that does whatever he sets his mind to even if it’s hard and everyone tells him not to. Minghao agrees with that. Just a second to recharge, and he’ll head back up. The fan down here isn’t strong enough.

Frantic pounding on the door breaks him free of a small trance. The first thing he thinks is _mailman_ even though he knows the mail’s already been delivered and the mailman never knocks on the door anyhow. Must be a pretty important package. The knocking keeps up for a long time before he figures it deserves an answer. A hurried fist nearly beams him in the nose when he pulls the door open.

Jeonghan got a haircut at the end of May, two whole days before school got out, and Minghao didn’t see him after that, and then he got sick, so he forgot. He’s remembering now. His hair is short, super short, curls around behind his ears and drips down his neck. He smiles, and he looks kind of like an angel when he does it, halo’d by the million raindrops leaving heaven behind him. He looks good with rivulets of water mapping his face, dripping off his chin like a watery beard. Minghao can’t say that, not even when he’s sick. Jeonghan’s grin is a substitute for the sun when it widens.

“I thought I missed you,” he rushes. A plastic shopping bag twists around his left wrist, dances in the wind, peppered with stagnant droplets. “I thought I heard the door open, but I had to find somewhere safe to put Josh’s bike, and it was closed when I got back.”

“Josh’s bike?”

“I stole Josh’s bike and rode over here.” A yellow umbrella punched back into its pouch hangs at his wrist, just behind the bag of groceries. Minghao is assuming they’re groceries. The bag looks like it’s for groceries.

“He’s gonna be mad at you.”

“He’s always mad at me.” Jeonghan blows at a piece of hair that’s hanging over his eyes more than he wants it to be, but the water’s made it weigh too much, so he has to comb it back by hand. “But I warned him I was taking it.” His eyes are glittery and pretty, comfortable places to get lost. He flicks them around behind Minghao, at the furniture inside, the walls, the floor. It’s a question.

 

Come on in.

 

Minghao grabs him a towel from the closet in the kitchen and makes him sit on one of the stools at the island until he’s dried off, though the chances of eradicating all dampness are slim. Jeonghan watches him, watches his meandering trail to the refrigerator, towel slung around the back of his neck. Knees bob with infinite energy while he sits, bump into the wooden slab in front of them. It sounds like a little kid running around.

“What do you want to drink?” Minghao asks. The words are hoarse, the sound of sandpaper, but he figures there are times in life where you talk even though it hurts, and now might as well be one. “We have water and orange juice.”

“Why don’t _you_ have some orange juice?” His bag crinkles when he sets it on the counter, forms a small pool Minghao’s mom is likely not to appreciate. Is it a blessing or a shame his mom can’t be here when he’s actually got a friend over? Jeonghan pulls a miniature bottle of orange juice from within his mysterious bag. “I got this for you.”

“For me?” Jeonghan nods. A tiny rainfall occurs under the roof, from his hair to the towel waiting patiently below. “Why?”

“You’re sick.” He nudges the bottle closer across the countertop until Minghao is forced to take it, condensation from the outside coating his palms like rain. Orange juice is far from his favorite thing to taste in the world, but it makes talking feel a lot less like gargling gravel.

“What else is in the bag?”

“Just stuff.” Obviously. Minghao won’t say that. “I got some soup and some cold medicine.”

“Why?”

“Your mom’s not here, so I’m taking care of you.” He sticks his thumb up. It’s supposed to be reassuring, but all Minghao can focus on is how insanely curved it is. It’s like a fish hook. Or a banana. Or something. “I also brought ice cream.”

“Sick people aren’t supposed to eat ice cream.” Minghao chugs down another gulp of the orange juice. It kind of looks like egg yolk. He needs to stop drinking it so fast. “I don’t even like ice cream.”

“Really? I wish you had told me.” The still-wet ends of his hair shake when he lowers his chin to the counter in a disappointed arc. “I actually came here with ice cream an hour and a half ago, but I ate it while I was waiting because it started to melt.” The kitchen light is weirdly beautiful when it falls on his face, less fluorescent bulb and more organic glow. “I guess it’s a good thing I had to make a second trip, though, since I only had the idea to get the soup and orange juice the second time I was in the store.” Minghao stares at him.

“You came here with just ice cream?”

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I’m sick, not going through a break-up.” Jeonghan laughs, an even tone, that dry and dusty sound, same as leaves skittering across the sidewalk when they’ve fallen in autumn. It’s a comforting sound, like a thin blanket, but it’s too hot for blankets. Minghao’s face is probably redder than he wants it to be.

“I guess that’s true.” His stare burns holes. Minghao feels them forming all over his face, edges smoldering, red and glowing hot. He’s going to look like Swiss cheese by the time Jeonghan leaves. “Shouldn’t you be in bed if you’re so sick?”

“You made me come downstairs to open the door.” He considers mentioning that it’s too hot to be in bed, anyway, but it’s hot everywhere else, so there’s no point in bringing it up. Moot. Minghao’s not always sure what that word means, but he feels it fits very well to his entire day.

“Then go back to bed!” Jeonghan springs from his perch in an instant, rushes around the island to push Minghao toward the staircase. “I’ll make soup and bring it up to you. Take your orange juice.” Minghao grabs the bottle but fights the shove.

“You don’t know where anything is.”

“I can find it.”

“I’m not supposed to eat in my room.”

“You don’t have to tell your mom about it.” Minghao’s sigh reminds him of the howling wind outside, but he concedes, takes steps up the stairs one by one until he’s made it to the top. Wind is still blowing inside his room like before, temperature a few comforting degrees cooler than when he left it. The bed is still too hot when he lies down.

What if his mom finds out he ate something in his room? He thinks about it while he takes another drink from his steadily dropping supply of orange juice. Will she yell? She’s not much of a yeller. It’ll be fine if he doesn’t spill anything and puts all the dishes back where they go, he guesses, but what if he spills something? Is he screwed? Is he better off dead? Maybe the rule isn’t even in place anymore. His mom hasn’t brought it up since he was in middle school. Jeonghan arrives with the soup before he thinks all the consequences through.

It’s weird to have Jeonghan watch him eat soup, weirder to be eating soup so hot when it’s a thousand degrees outside. Minghao sweats, from the fever or the soup or the stare, and he thinks again that the fan isn’t as strong as it needs to be by a long shot. And why does Jeonghan look so pleased, anyway? Nothing to smile at here. Just two dudes and some soup.

“How is it?”

“It’s fine.” Every spoonful is a very small gift, a very tiny step closer to health. Minghao’s head doesn’t feel as hot anymore, but his cheeks retain their redness just fine, chest is certainly on its way to burning out from inside. That stupid haircut. “Did you clean everything you used?” He pouts.

“I will later.” That’s a weak promise if Minghao’s ever heard one. A lie, most likely. He doesn’t have the energy to argue about it right now. The rest of the soup loses its taste on the way down, but it feels good to finish.

What is there to do when the soup is all gone? Jeonghan forces Minghao to knock back a tiny cup of medicine with much more zeal than his own mother would have used. Cherry is a very generous way to describe that flavor. It’s more like a mix between chlorine and that terrible feeling you get in your chest when you have a dream where someone is trying to kill you, or maybe a cross of ammonia and a nightmare where you show up to school naked. Not much Minghao can do about it either way. Maybe it’ll help.

After a while, the grimy layer of sweat sticking to Minghao’s skin starts to bug him too much, especially when Jeonghan’s had the pleasure of rain washing the sweat off his skin and making him so much less sticky, if just as unclean. It probably smells like body odor in this room, and now Minghao is getting self-conscious about it, especially with the way Jeonghan’s shirt hangs low around his collarbones. Collarbones don’t have anything to do with stench. Minghao is still self-conscious.

“I think I’m gonna take a shower,” he says.

“Want me to come with you?”

Funny joke. Hilarious. Jeonghan is very prone to this kind of joking, and Minghao knew it already, but it still strikes a weird chord that he’s not sure he wants touched. Ha ha, he reminds himself. Very funny. Only he’d be inclined to think it was much funnier were his stomach not doing backflips and collapsing on itself at the same time. He blows a breath out through his nose that comes out a lot more aggressive than intended. Jeonghan is hot. I get it. Total bummer. But his lungs still won’t sit quite right.

“Just a joke,” he amends. Must be the look on Minghao’s face pushing his eyebrows into that nervous line. “To lighten the mood.” The mood was light enough already in Minghao’s happy little opinion.

“Yeah.” Minghao’s legs finally feel like normal legs and not matches connected by little globs of putty when he gets up to fetch a towel. Jeonghan’s eyes on him don’t help it. Something important hits him right before he struts into the bathroom. “Would you, uh,” he licks his lips, “sit outside the door and make sure I don’t faint while I’m in there?” Jeonghan’s eyes can spell. Amusement, they say. That’s a pretty long word for a couple of eyes.

“That’s a weird thing to ask, but I’ll do it.” Who cares if you think it’s weird, Minghao grumbles in his head. I don’t want to die naked. He bites his tongue and goes in anyway.

The water pouring out of the faucet is a lot like the rain still coming down outside, though less relentless and far more forgiving. As much as his body is dying for deluge of cold, he keeps the water turned hot, knows a cool stream will hit that weird spot at the bottoms of his ears and make his throat hurt worse. He watches the water run over the tiled sides of the shower, pelt the pale blue curtain, watches steam rise thick around his legs while he stands under the downpour. It’s hard to think through so much fog, hard to think when his head is light enough to rise above the air, so he doesn’t even try. The water runs over his spine, the world’s most human river.

His feet freeze when they touch back down on the cool tile outside the shower, vision clouds with lingering mist. A very grave mistake becomes apparent to him on his exit: he didn’t grab fresh clothes on his way in. That means his clothes are not in here, which means they are out there, which means he has to go out to get them. Jeonghan is out there. Minghao is naked and he has to go back out there and pass Jeonghan to get to his clothes before he can change into them. Jeonghan is out there and attractive and Minghao has to pass him, Minghao who is naked and stupid and nervous and dumb and is picking now to address that little crush he was pretending didn’t exist before he got sick. Just to take stock of the situation. He looks in the fogged up mirror and frowns. Stupid haircut. He almost wishes he had passed out and died.

Steam overtakes the corridor between the bathroom and Minghao’s room when he flings open the door, willing his ill legs to sprint with their highest velocity toward his bedroom, but he doesn’t get a chance to dash due to Jeonghan sitting right there in the middle of the passageway and facing the door head on. He throws his arms in the air with glee.

“You didn’t pass out!” he cries. His eyes drink in the sight of Minghao’s still-living form for a good minute before a gear clicks in his head, a gear indicating this still-living form is quite a bit more naked than he was expecting it to be. A shy pink dyes his cheeks, spring flowers, and Minghao can feel eyes dragging over the slopes of his shoulders, around his neck. Minghao is skinny and he knows it, the kind of skinny where people are afraid to get too close to you on a bench because every part of you is bones and they don’t want to get a bruise, but Jeonghan is looking at him like he isn’t that type of skinny at all, making him feel more vulnerable than he is already. He pulls the towel tighter around his waist and gulps.

“I forgot to grab clothes.”

Each step is shakier than he’d like, but he takes them as fast as he can, a straight shot to home plate, where he can be free for just a second, only he is not free, because he turns around to close the door and finds that Jeonghan tailed him straight to the entrance. Luckily, he can pass off the color of his face as the product of something like heat from the shower or his fever and absolutely not being caused by squashed nerves and youthful hormones. He pretends for his own sake not to notice that Jeonghan’s gaze is not really on his face much.

“Why did you follow me?”

“Should I not have?”

“I have to change,” he explains. “I’m naked.”

“Ah.”

Time is a construct, but its passage is not. What’s up for debate is the labels assigned to certain subsets, the names you give the units. Most might call what passes now seconds. Minghao will call them eons.

“Why are you still standing there?” he crows impatiently. Jeonghan jumps.

“Sorry,” he mutters. Finally, Jesus Christ, finally he meets Minghao’s eyes. There’s no good reason for his to always be so pretty and glittery. “Does it bother you that I’m looking at you?”

“Kind of,” Minghao responds with enough vinegar, enough to make it sound more like _obviously_ and _please stop_ than just _kind of_. Jeonghan takes the hint enough to back out of the doorway and let Minghao slam the door in his face. Probably a little harsh for someone who brought him soup and medicine. Doesn’t matter. The door cannot be unslammed.

Jeonghan might be interested. Minghao doesn’t want to think about that while he’s putting a clean shirt on, but illness has loosened the reins on thought, so he thinks yet another item on the ever-growing list he has of foolish things to think. He might be. Jeonghan is the kind of guy that says vaguely flirty things to everyone when he has the opportunity, and it’s hard to interpret sometimes. Maybe he’s not interested in anybody, or maybe he’s a little bit interested in everybody. It’s hard to tell with guys like that, guys with good smiles and shiny eyes and hands that never do the right thing. With great haircuts. Sheesh.

But he did steal Josh’s bike to be here. He steals Josh’s bike often enough that it’s not even a big deal, often enough that Josh is almost at fault for not watching over it more carefully, but he usually does it for dumb things like trying to see how many laps he can do around the block in five minutes, even though he always gets tired halfway through the first lap. Jeonghan is kind of a puzzle anyway, the kind of guy you hang out with but always wonder why you do, wonder how he even found himself in your circle of friends and what made him decide to stay there. If Minghao asked everyone Jeonghan knows, he doubts any of them would say he seems like the type to take care of a friend who’s sick. More the type to laugh at them unapologetically.

He sits patient on the floor when Minghao emerges again with clothes on, back against the wall, eyes halfway closed. The sound of the door opening sparks him to attention. “Do you want to have some ice cream?”

No. Ice cream will counteract all the good done by the soup and the orange juice and the medicine. Ice cream will make me sicker. Ice cream isn’t even that good in the first place. But Minghao’s face is too hot for answers to that question that actually make sense. His whole body is too hot.

“Sure.”

It’s not even ice cream. It’s sorbet, lemon raspberry sorbet or something like that, and Minghao doesn’t know when they started selling this kind of stuff at the local convenience stores, but he likes it better than regular ice cream, likes the fruity tang more than milky creaminess. It stains his lips a purplish shade of pink with its color, stains his tongue the same, and it does the same to Jeonghan’s while he eats. Minghao throws a glance at the blinking green clock on the microwave. An hour and a half sure has an awful habit of feeling like two weeks when Jeonghan comes with it.

“The rain seems like it’s letting up,” Jeonghan muses, eyes out the window. The sound is so quiet now Minghao’s nearly forgotten about it, no more than the occasional trickle of water filtering down through the gutters. A low whistle slides out between Jeonghan’s teeth. “I wonder if Junhui and the rest are having fun.”

“Why didn’t you stay with them?”

“Since it was raining, they just went to play Mario Party.” Figures. “And Soonyoung said you were sick.” Minghao’s ears perk. Something here is inconsistent.

“Soonyoung?” His spoon clatters against the counter. “If he told you, why did you ask?”

“I don’t trust him.” An interesting thing to say coming from the guy almost nobody trusts. Just last week, Soonyoung said he probably wouldn’t trust Jeonghan with anything more important than a locker combination. “Besides, he didn’t mention that you were alone and therefore needed me to save you.”

“I didn’t need you to save me,” Minghao chokes, and Jeonghan frowns. Why are you here? It hangs on his tongue. Jeonghan regards Minghao’s almost empty bowl, and a smile flowers again at his peach-pink lips.

“How was the ice cream?”

“Fine.” Minghao clears his throat and stirs the last melting shred around the bottom of the bowl. “It’s probably going to make me sicker.”

“It’s summer,” Jeonghan reminds him breezily, flicking his wrist. “Get sick all you want. I’ll come take care of you when your mom isn’t around.” I don’t want to get sick, though, Minghao thinks. “I’ll kiss it away.” Air clogs Minghao’s throat for a dangerous second before breath finds him again.

“The sickness?” Jeonghan nods. A slow, thoughtful, pretty nod. The kind of nod actors probably nod when they’re pretending to be beautiful, wonderful people. “What a weird thing to say.”

“Why is it weird?” Why would it not be? He’s a real enigma, that guy, Junhui told Minghao once, the kind of odd ball you’re not sure you want falling on your court. That was about the strangest metaphor Minghao had ever heard at the time, but the longer he spends looking into Jeonghan’s eyes, talking to him here, the more he thinks he gets it.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Minghao tells him. “You would just get sick, anyway.”

“I don’t mind getting sick if I catch it off you.” Sweet as sorbet. It melts in Minghao’s ears, drips down slow and steady, settles in the bottom of his skull. He kind of likes it. Or maybe he doesn’t. Jeonghan looks like he really wants to hear something said back, and Minghao decides he will exercise the very limited privilege of the sick to say and ask whatever they want.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

“Huh?”

“Are you serious, or are you joking?” Minghao taps at the side of the bowl with his spoon, a dull little clink that echoes too far in the kitchen. “Are you flirting with me, or are you just weird?” Jeonghan looks like a deer caught in headlights. He also looks like the headlights themselves, and Minghao feels like the deer. That was probably a mistake to ask. Too late now. Bummer.

“Do you want me to be serious?” That’s not a fair question!

“I asked first.” Yeah, you did, Jeonghan’s smile tells him. What a lazy smile.

“I’m serious if you want me to be serious.”

“What’s that mean?”

“You answer me first.” Minghao chews the skin off his bottom lip.

“Maybe.”

“If you want me to be serious, I’ll be serious, but if you don’t, just think I’m weird.”

“Are you confessing to me?”

“Do you want me to be?”

“Stop that.” Jeonghan’s laugh is not unlike the rain in the way it falls so evenly, the way it’s calming on the ears as an afternoon drizzle, the way it seems like it’s everywhere and nowhere at the same time. “I could knock you into next week, you know, if I wasn’t sick.”

“I know you could,” Jeonghan says, “but do you want to?” This question is also a trap.

“I would.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Thunder rumbles outside, distant and angry, tired and annoyed. Minghao’s always thought quiet thunder claps sounded like irritated old men, grumbling behind the morning paper and above a cup of strong black coffee, fuzzy eyebrows gray and lowered. Today is a real old man of a day, weird and grumpy and inexplicably unable to make up its mind about how it wants to act. Now is not the time to be thinking about things that don’t even make sense.

“I don’t want to unless I have to.”

“I came over because you’re cute and I like you.” He leans forward, two miles too far and two days too early. When he talks again, it’s a whisper under the rain. “Does that make you happy?”

“I guess.”

“Don’t guess.” The next layer of Minghao’s lip skin succumbs to the void.

“It does.”

Jeonghan is a pushy guy. Pushy enough to steal his own friend’s bike on the regular without batting even a single lash. Pushy enough to ride that stolen bike over to a different friend’s house without a proper invitation and wait for an hour to be let inside. Pushy enough to kiss without asking, to kiss somebody who’s sick and knows it’s a bad idea to be kissed, to kiss and not apologize after he’s through. But Minghao would feel too bad if he apologized, so he guesses maybe that’s not so bad.

The rain fizzles out even more quickly after that—karmic connection, maybe? All Minghao knows is it feels kind of gross to have someone else’s mouth touch yours when your throat feels so nasty and raw and your whole body is aching in unusual ways, but he doesn’t even want to tell Jeonghan to stop. Only he has to tell him to stop sooner or later because that pot Jeonghan used earlier doesn’t look like it’s about to be cleaned and the house probably only needs to have one person in it when Minghao’s mom gets home to avoid all those probing questions he thinks he might not even know how to answer. Jeonghan has got to go, and he’s got to go soon. Minghao doesn’t want him to. Total bummer.

His little yellow umbrella hangs from his wrist like some kind of special secret tool, wagging back and forth when he walks to the door with a wide grin splitting his face. He’s so dry now. It seems like days ago he walked in out of that torrent outside, the torrent that’s been subdued into a shadow of its former self. He leans hard against the door jamb, weight heavy on his shoulder.

“Thanks for taking care of me today.”

“Thanks for falling asleep and leaving me outside in the rain for an hour.”

“Don’t guilt me.”

“I’ll get sick because of you.” Minghao glares. “Don’t make that face. You’re too cute. I’m joking.” A final kiss presses to Minghao’s lips before he has time to process it. Somehow he feels a lot less sick and a lot more fevered. “Get well soon. Call me if you’re still sick.”

“You better not be sick tomorrow.” You better not be sick because it’ll be my fault and I'll feel bad, he really means. “I’ll beat you up.” That sentence is just not true.

“Healthy as a horse,” Jeonghan promises. He opens the door and pads out a few steps on sandaled feet, out into the meager veil of rain still weakly falling. He looks like some kind of misty angel. A weather fairy. “I’ll call you later.”

Minghao watches him walk off, down the rest of the graveled path toward the driveway and around the corner to where he’s hidden Josh’s bike behind the bushes. Through the window, he watches him wipe the water off the seat and climb on, turn the pedals in slow circles and split off the driveway in a wide arc, a glitter of orange aluminum that stands out too much against the dull gray concrete of the sidewalk. Short strands of hair whip around his ears, wild and unruly, and the umbrella on his wrist swings side to side, a mobile pendulum with no meter.

When he turns left, out of the neighborhood and out of sight, the sky cracks open, golden rays of sun shining in solid beams on the colorless pavement below, the melting world outside. Grass bends into the new light, up from where the rainfall stomped it down, and a chorus of birds comes out of hiding to warble its latest tune. Minghao smiles at the weak breeze of the fan that whips at his steaming forehead, a too-slow turn that is somehow just enough.

 

See you soon.

**Author's Note:**

> hey. i appreciate u reading this. i hope u liked it  
> this fic is kind of weird. i wrote it for myself as a kind of therapeutic thing. i had a bad week last week and ended it feeling pretty shitty in general, so i wrote this as a kind of way to get myself back on track and to feel less sad. if you didn't like it, that's ok. you probably won't. but the goal was to help myself feel better and writing this was a nice break for me. i hope u can find it in urself to enjoy it as well.  
> this style was a little different for me i think. if you want to locate me on social media and kick my ass about it, you're free to do so. as always, feedback is so greatly appreciated. i'll probably hate myself for posting this tomorrow


End file.
